So much to talk about, so little time. The Democrats will launch impeachment proceedings. Not again, they said, in regard to 2020 cheating from a foreign power. Not again.
Mike Murphy/WaPo:
I’m a Republican. It’s time to put GOP senators on the spot with impeachment.
A House impeachment vote would, in short order, put every GOP senator and representative on the spot. Republican senators in particular would no longer have the shelter of silence, as they would make the final determination on guilt. It’s comparatively easy for the House Democrats to punish Trump with charges; the vital question is whether Senate Republicans would be brave enough to clean their own house, or brave enough to defend the president’s actions without equivocation. Then let the voters judge.
That is the correct take, from Dave Weigel.
WaPo (big story):
Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined
“An awful lot of people were trying to keep a meeting from happening for the reason that it would not be focused on Ukraine-U.S. relations,” one former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter…
One official — speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity — described the climate as verging on “bloodletting.”…
“Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This s---show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.
Lawfare from January:
Can the Senate Decline to Try an Impeachment Case?
If the House impeaches, then it would follow that the Senate tries the case. This is what the Senate did on the two occasions, in the cases of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, that the House voted articles of impeachment.
The current Senate rules would further support this view. They contemplate that when the House has voted an impeachment, the Senate will be notified, the House managers will present their case and trial proceedings, which the rules prescribe in some detail, will begin.
But it is also possible that, in this time of disregard and erosion of established institutional practices and norms, the current leadership of the Senate could choose to abrogate them once more. The same Mitch McConnell who blocked the Senate’s exercise of its authority to advise and consent to the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, could attempt to prevent the trial of a House impeachment of Donald Trump. And he would not have to look far to find the constitutional arguments and the flexibility to revise Senate rules and procedures to accomplish this purpose.
The Constitution does not by its express terms direct the Senate to try an impeachment. In fact, it confers on the Senate "the sole power to try,” which is a conferral of exclusive constitutional authority and not a procedural command.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Here’s a timeline of Trump’s latest scandal. It’s damning.
It now looks as if Trump’s pressure on Zelensky is at the center of the whistleblower complaint that top Trump officials have refused to transmit to Congress, in violation of the law, though this has not been publicly confirmed.
The emerging spin from Trump’s propagandists is that Trump didn’t “pressure” Zelensky to dig dirt on Biden and that there was no explicit quid pro quo involving the military aid.
But this spin is a joke. The already known facts are damning enough. To simplify this story, I created this timeline of it:
BBC:
Supreme Court: Suspending Parliament was unlawful, judges rule
Delivering the justices' conclusions, she said: "The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification."
Lady Hale said the unanimous decision of the 11 justices meant Parliament had effectively not been prorogued - the decision was null and of no effect.
It would be really helpful if we could just prove Trump lied to the Queen.
Back to home:
Quin Hilyer/WashExaminer, conservative columnist:
Compare it to historical cases and it's clear this Trump-Ukraine story is impeachment material
Never in my conscious memory, though, have I heard of an American president urging a foreign nation to investigate specific U.S. citizens who were not on the lam from American law. (I welcome correction here, but either way, the examples would have to be vanishingly rare.) For this to happen, in any instance, would be outlandish, especially if there is no obvious U.S. security interest in pursuing the American targets. The president is responsible for the U.S. system of justice, not for alleged (but very vague) violations, by Americans, of foreign law.
Now add the element of the specific identity of the American citizens whom the president wants targeted. These aren’t some sort of U.S.-based international mobsters. These aren’t any of a number of American businessmen trading influence and cutting corners in international commerce. Instead, these happen to be the president’s main perceived political rival, and his son.
In short, these circumstances involve a president using the prestige of his office to urge a foreign government to harass the president’s main political rival. In such a case, it doesn’t even matter if the political rival is guilty. Even if the rival is guilty of some foreign violation, that is not a reasonable excuse for the president to use such pressure. Remember, there are so far no substantive allegations — zero, zilch, nada — that either the rival or his son broke U.S. law. The president has no authority or legitimate interest in this based on his public office; his only interest here is political, meaning to hurt his rival. …
If Trump has used the power of his office, for no legitimate security reason, to pressure a foreign government to target his own political rival, then he must be evicted from the presidency.
Brian Beutler/Crooked:
THE LESSONS OF IMPEACHMENT AND THE END OF TRUMP’S IMPUNITY
In the days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller produced a report showing Trump encouraged and expected to benefit from a foreign attack on the 2016 election, then abused his powers of office to obstruct the ensuing investigation, one of the few Democrats who recognized that taking impeachment off the table would create an unacceptable level of moral hazard was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). She warned, “If Donald Trump can do all that he tried to do to impede an investigation into his own wrongdoing and an attack by a foreign government,” and Congress takes no action, “then it gives license to the next president, and the next president, and the next president to do the same thing.”
The only thing her analysis missed is that Congress’s inaction also gave Donald Trump license to commit the same crimes all over again, this time with the awesome powers of the presidency at his fingertips.
And that is exactly what happened.
Members of the Trump campaign escaped indictment for cooperating with Russia’s attack on the election by the skins of their teeth. Trump himself escaped indictment for obstruction of justice only because the Justice Department prohibits its prosecutors from indicting sitting presidents. In lieu of an indictment, Mueller effectively referred Trump to Congress for impeachment, and in the face of hard evidence that he’d committed grave impeachable offenses, Congress took a pass. That combination of evasions sent Trump a clear signal that he could replay all the despicable and illegal things he did to obtain the presidency in the first place and nobody would rise to stop him.
A critical mass of Democrats and liberals ignored or scoffed at that warning. They’ve come around now that Trump has been caught—this time for extorting the president of Ukraine to sabotage Joe Biden—but it was never foreordained that Trump would be caught. Indeed, the scenario in which Trump kept this new conspiracy secret until next year is all too easy and horrifying to imagine.
Lee Drutman/FiveThirtyEight:
The Moderate Middle Is A Myth
Despite some overlap among independents, moderates and undecided voters, each group is relatively distinct. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean there are cohesive ideological beliefs within each group.
To test this, I used policy questions from the same Voter Study Group survey to make two indexes5 measuring attitudes on economic policy and immigration. I chose these two issues because they are perhaps the two most central in national politics, and they represent competing dimensions of political conflict — few voters hold consistently middle-of-the-road opinions on both issues. The indexes range from -1 (far left) to +1 (far right).Opposing Forces.” And for additional details on the economic index, see my June 2019 report, co-authored with Vanessa Williamson and Felicia Wong, “On the Money.”
Overall, the electorate ranges widely along both dimensions. But broadly, there are two major clusters: Democratic voters populate the lower-left part of the distribution (liberal on both economics and immigration), and Republicans populate the upper-right part of the distribution (conservative on both issues).
Independent voters, however, come from all over the ideological map: